Really, the last thing you need at Glastonbury is a sense of perspective. The place is so bizarre you have to just roll with it. Whether it's the tents stretching as far as the eye can see, the strange blissed-out state you achieve after two nights of lager and little sleep, or the fact that Badly Drawn Boy can wander past you in a meanderingly ordinary way - this is just not a normal place.

But in another way, Glastonbury is very normal, very English and very, very privileged, as we were reminded by a project being run by the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR). The UNHCR has come to Glastonbury to draw a poignant analogy between the 140,000 people camping at Glastonbury, and the 160,000 people who have fled the Darfur region of Sudan into refugee camps in Chad.

"In a small way, Glastonbury-goers live like refugees," says the UNHCR's spokesman Larry Hollingworth. "We hope that this will make them more sympathetic to the plight of those living with the reality in Chad."

With the rain turning the festival thoroughfares into muddy slipways, it's worth being reminded that in other parts of the world really terrible things are happening. It rather puts into perspective the occasional duff note hit by a drug-addled bassist.

It's children who are carrying the UNHCR message. There are hundreds of kids at the festival, and the UNHCR are offering parents the chance to leave their kids in the tent for an hour, during which time they sit the Camp Challenge - a quiz that draws comparisons between the festival and the situation of the refugees in Chad.

As of Saturday morning, 500 kids had completed this quiz, most of whom apparently had little idea what a refugee was, let alone what it's like to be one. The kids are being asked to draw postcards welcoming refugees to Britain. Many of these featured the CND symbol - now becoming something akin to the classic smiley face symbol, together with phrases like "Don't worry, be happy".

These cheery pictures contrasted strongly with the images on the sides of the UNHCR tent, which were painted by children in Somalia and Sudan. One showed a family in a river surrounded by crocodiles, being shot at by militia on the riverbank. In another, a scattering of coloured footprints walked back and forth over the border between Somalia and Kenya. As the sounds of Sister Sledge joyfully proclaiming that they were lost in music throbbed from the Pyramid stage next door, the children's pictures provided a chilling reminder of what being a refugee is really about.

The Glastonbury children who finish the quiz are given a blue blow-up beach ball. These balls have been bouncing around the heads of people in the Glastonbury crowds, skipping through the air to the strains of Oasis and Kings of Leon. You may have seen them on the TV coverage, and now you know what they are: little blue bubbles of perspective.